Updated at 7:08 p.m. ET: CHICAGO -- Union officials agreed to end the Chicago teachers strike, and classes will resume on Wednesday in the nation's third-largest school district.

The Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates -- nearly 800 members -- voted to end the strike during a meeting at Operating Engineers Hall, on the city's south side. After the vote, the delegates came out of the hall singing "Solidarity Forever," the Chicago Tribune reported.

The voice vote -- 98 percent in favor -- comes after delegates had a chance to review a contract proposal solidified over the weekend and means roughly 350,000 Chicago Public Schools students will be back in class after seven days off.

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The action, however, does not mean an automatic approval of that contract. Ratification of the contract requires a separate vote from the union's rank and file.

"We feel very positive about moving forward. We feel grateful that we have a united union, and that when a union moves together we have amazing things happen," Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said shortly after the vote.

"We said that it was time, that we couldn’t solve all the problems of the world with one contract. And it was time to suspend the strike,” she said.

NBCChicago.com's Live Blog coverage of Chicago's historic strike

Union delegate Mike Bochner said “an overwhelming majority” of delegates voted for the strike’s end on a voice vote. “I’m really excited, I’m really relieved,”  Bochner, an elementary school teacher, told The Chicago Sun Times.

Ahead of the vote, hundreds of parents had gathered outside the Chicago Board of Education to stand with teachers.

"Whatever decision they make today on the proposed contract, we're behind them," Erica Clark, a Chicago schools parent told reporters. "Parents are asking for the same things teachers are asking for."

Chicago Public Schools teachers walked off the job on Sept. 10 after more than a year of slow, contentious negotiations over salary, health benefits and job security. The teachers' previous contract expired June 30 and both sides weeks later rejected a report assembled by an independent fact-finder.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the work stoppage "unnecessary" and one of "choice."

While leadership on both sides continued the back-and-forth of contract negotiations, thousands of teachers and their supporters for days took to the city streets in a massive show of solidarity.

Education Nation: Get involved in our 2012 summit, Sept. 23-25

On Monday, Emanuel and CPS attorneys filed a request for an injunction to force teachers off the picket lines, claiming the outstanding issues, as publicly stated by the CTU -- teacher evaluations and recalls -- weren't legal reasons for a work stoppage.

A provision added to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act last year prohibits teachers from strike on issues unrelated to economic matters; those involving pay and benefits.

A Cook County judge declined the mayor's request to hold a same-day hearing on the injunction request. Instead, that hearing would have been held Wednesday. With Tuesday's action by the House of Delegates, that hearing is no longer necessary.

The proposed contract includes the following:

• The CTU wants a three year contract, which guarantees a 3 percent increase the first year and a 2 percent increase for both the second and third year. It also includes the option to extend the contract for a fourth year with a 3 percent raise;
• CPS will move away from merit pay;
• The board will hire more than 600 additional "special" teachers in art, music, physical education, world languages and other classes;
• One half of all CPS hires must be displaced members;
• CPS will evaluate teachers based on 70 percent "teacher practice" and 30 percent "student growth." Additionally, the first year of implementation will not harm tenured teachers and there is a right to appeal the evaluations.

The strike forced parents to find alternative care for their children. Many said they exhausted available vacation time. Others made use of the nearly 150 "Children First" sites that provided students with alternative programming and meals.

As the strike entered its second week, some frustrated parents became more vocal in their demand that both sides end the stalemate. A small group of parents on Monday marched outside CTU headquarters holding signs that read "If you care about the kids, go back to work" and "350,000 CPS Hostages! Let our children learn" and "Don't say you care, show it!"

NBCChicago.com's BJ Lutz and Lisa Balde contributed to this report, as did NBC's Sevil Omer.

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Updated at 3:31 p.m.. ET: CHICAGO -- Classes for the nation’s third-largest school district were canceled for Friday as the Chicago teachers set out to strike for a fifth day, according to NBCChicago.com.

 Negotiators trying to bring an end to the Chicago teachers' strike had said they were confident an agreement would be reached soon, but union leaders cautioned parents it was "highly unlikely" students would return to school Friday.

Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said she hoped an agreement can be reached by the end of Thursday, the fourth day of the strike.

Lewis told reporters she doubts teachers would be back in classrooms Friday, but said she's hoping for a Monday return. "Oh, I'm praying, praying, praying. I'm on my knees for that, please," Lewis told NBC Chicago. "Yes, I'm hoping for Monday. That would be good for us."

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Chicago Public Schools chief education adviser Barbara Byrd-Bennett was even more optimistic, saying she was trying to get students back in class by Friday.

"The conversation was productive," Byrd-Bennett said on Thursday. "There was steady and substantial movement on key issues around teacher evaluation and layoffs and recall.”

Chicago's teachers in the nation's third-largest school district went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years in dispute of education reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

For the first time in days, Emanuel's chief negotiator, School Board President David Vitale, agreed with Lewis' summary of the talks. Only 24 hours earlier, Vitale had threatened not to come back to the negotiating table until the union put forward a better offer. 

"We had a very productive evening," Vitale said. "We all go away hopeful that we can go come together on this." 

350,000 kids out of school
With more than 350,000 children out of school, the patience of parents had begun to fray as hopes of a quick resolution to the biggest U.S. labor strike in a year faded. 

Earlier in the day, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who is based in Chicago, appeared at the site where negotiations were supposed to take place on Wednesday and said that he had met with both sides separately to urge them to settle. 

Lewis said the progress on Wednesday was on the two most vexing issues -- using student test scores to evaluate teachers and giving more authority to principals to hire teachers. 

 Chicago mayor: Get kids in class during contract talks with teachers

"We made significant progress on the teacher evaluation side of the equation," Byrd-Bennett told NBC Chicago. "Clearly we're remaining consistent with not wanting to lower the standards for our children. ... I think there were really good discussions."

 But Lewis said Thursday, there's still much work to be done.

"We haven't even talked about the professional development side," she said. "We want to make sure this is done right. Doing something fast is not the way to go. Haste makes waste."

The union is concerned that more than a quarter of its membership could be fired because the teachers work in poor neighborhoods where students perform poorly on standardized tests, which Emanuel wants to use to evaluate teachers. 

Lewis also said the union fears Emanuel plans to close scores of schools, putting unionized teachers out of work. 

Lewis led the walkout on Monday of more than 29,000 teachers and support staff, saying the union would not agree to school reforms it considers misguided and disrespectful.

Question at heart of Chicago strike: How do you measure teacher performance?

The dispute jolted the United States, where a weakened labor movement seldom stages strikes and even less frequently wins them. Organized labor has lost several fights in the last year including Wisconsin stripping public sector unions of most of their bargaining power, Indiana making union dues voluntary and two California cities voting to pare pensions for union workers. 

The strike in Barack Obama's home city has also put the U.S. president in a tough spot between his ally and former top White House aide Emanuel and labor unions Obama is counting on to win re-election on November 6. 

Obama has said nothing in public about the dispute, allowing administration surrogates to urge the two sides to settle. 

Obama's own Education Department has championed some of the reforms Emanuel is seeking, and a win for the ambitious Chicago mayor would add momentum to the national school reform movement. 

'Difficult for us to understand'
The city is operating 147 schools with non-union staff to offer meals and "keep children safe and engaged," but only a fraction of parents have been using that option, officials said. 

At Disney elementary school, several dozen strikers with homemade signs targeting Emanuel and school policies picketed in cool, sunny weather on Wednesday. 

 Union leader to Chicago teachers rally: In for the long haul

Kent Barnhart, a music teacher for the past 25 years, said neighborhood parents had been supportive, offering water and opening their homes and even joining picket lines to march. But he said teachers were frustrated with the slow talks. 

"It's difficult for us to understand why they have not truly discussed over the last 11 months things that have been very important," he said of school officials. "It didn't seem like they took it seriously -- really important things like evaluations, health benefits and pay." 

Both sides agree Chicago schools need fixing. Chicago students consistently perform poorly on standardized math and reading tests. About 60 percent of high school students graduate, compared with 75 percent nationwide and more than 90 percent in some affluent Chicago suburban schools. 

The fight does not appear to center on wages, with the school district offering an average 16 percent rise over four years and some benefit improvements. 

More than 80 percent of Chicago public school students qualify for free lunches at school because they come from low-income households. 

NBCChicago.com's Michelle Relerford and Lisa Balde contributed to this report, as did  The Associated Press and Reuters.

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With negotiators trying to hammer out an agreement that would end Chicago’s teachers strike, one of the key sticking points is how to evaluate whether a teacher is doing a good job, an issue that has riled school boards across the U.S. in recent years.

Chicago’s school leaders are proposing that student performance on standardized tests count toward 25 percent of a teacher’s assessment, growing to 40 percent in five years, according to NBCChicago.com.

But Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis is critical of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s push to make great use of standardized tests in teacher reviews, calling the process flawed. Union officials say the system wouldn’t do enough to take into account outside factors such as poverty, crime and homelessness.

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"Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," Lewis said in announcing the strike. It was unclear what union officials proposed instead.

The battle in Chicago over using student test scores to judge teachers is just one front in a nationwide battle over how to make sure teachers are doing a good job, and that taxpayer dollars and student time aren’t going to waste.

"This is going to become a long-term battle that everyone's watching very closely," said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow in education at the Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a conservative research center. "Teacher unions are at a crossroads: Are they going to participate in designing better teacher evaluations or resist and not change anything. The Chicago union seems to be taking the resist option, drawing their line in the sand."

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The Obama administration, through its $4 billion Race to the Top competition and waivers from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind, has urged states to change teacher assessments to make use of test data as a key component to set a teacher's pay or end their employment. The administration granted waivers to states that promised to show improvements in student and school performance and link teacher evaluations to student test scores.

Supporters say current review tools fail to give administrators a reliable assessment of a teacher's effectiveness, while critics argue there's no evidence linking student performance to a teacher's worth.

"Teacher evaluations should be based on multiple measures," said Marcus Mrowka, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers, which has 1.5 million members. "Testing has a role but should not sanction teachers but inform instruction."

Twenty-four states now require teacher evaluations based on some measure of student growth, according to an analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and policy group. Public school districts in Tennessee and Washington, D.C., recently implemented new teacher evaluations tying outcomes to merit raises, while Colorado and New York are deep in the process of developing an evaluation system, the council noted.

In the past three years, at least 20 state legislatures have passed bills setting up new teacher evaluation processes, according to the council. Illinois joined the ranks last year when its legislature passed a law mandating new teacher evaluations, with Chicago’s leaders rushing to embrace the system, called the Performance Evaluation Review Act.

“The evaluation system should be built around continuing improvement of instruction,” said Rob Weil, AFT’s director of field programs and educational issues in Washington, D.C. “Evaluations should help people improve and we need to build systems that give teachers the information they need so they can improve. The process should not be punitive.”

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In Chicago, Lewis has warned that as many as 6,000 teachers could lose their jobs under the new evaluation system. The union represents about 25,000 teachers and staff, who walked off the job Monday.

School officials say they do not know how union leaders determined that number, and telephone calls by NBC News to union headquarters went unanswered Tuesday.

Emanuel has promised that teachers would not be fired in the first year of the evaluation process.

Union leaders, however, are still resisting.

“This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator,” said the union in a statement. “Further there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.”

About 60 percent of students in Chicago public schools complete high school, according to the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. 

“We are spending more and more on students, throwing more and more money into the system,” said Ted Dabrowski, vice president of the Illinois Policy Institute. “If you want the best teachers in the system, then teachers should be paid and promoted based on their performance. It’s important that we improve the system, which has become a failed system.”

Do you have an education-related story? Contact Sevil Omer at sevil.omer@msnbc.com

 

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One of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. is getting rid of its police department.

Amid what they call a “public safety crisis,” officials in Camden, N.J., plan to disband the city's 141-year-old police department and replace it with a non-union division of the Camden County Police.

Camden city officials have touted the move as necessary to combat the city’s growing financial and safety problems. The entire 267-member police department will be laid off and replaced with a newly reformatted metro division, which is projected to have some 400 members. It will serve only the city of Camden starting in early 2013.

“It’s not a money-saver, it’s living within the budget you’ve got to get more boots on the ground,” Camden County spokesperson Joyce Gabriel told NBC News. “There has been an uptick in violence this year, and the city decided to go with the county’s police department.”

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Camden isn’t the first cash-strapped city to be faced with the decision to eliminate or merge its police department.

Bernard Melekian, director of the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office, told NBC News that as communities around the country recover from the recession, police mergers are part of a new reality that will likely continue through the next decade.

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“This really reflects a much broader issue, which is that the economy is changing the delivery of police services profoundly,” Melekian said, “and those agencies undergoing regionalization and consolidation – in particular, smaller ones that are financially distressed – are going to have to find another way of delivering those core services.”

'Recipe for disaster'
Given Camden’s exceptionally high rate of violence (the city recorded this year’s 41st homicide earlier this month), city police officers in danger being laid off say the transition is risky at best.

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“We’re concerned, we’re definitely concerned,” Camden Fraternal Order of Police President John Williamson told NBC News. “You’re going to create a police department and staff it with people who are unfamiliar with the city and say, ‘Go ahead and fight crime.’ That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Afflicted by homelessness, drug trafficking, prostitution, robbery and violence, Camden has consistently ranked high among the top 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S. since 1998, according to Morgan Quitno Press, a research firm that compiles statistical data on cities. In 2010, Camden had the highest crime rate in the U.S., with 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people, more than five times the national average.

Camden Mayor Dana Redd underscored the importance of the new, regionalized police force in her proposal for the next fiscal year’s budget.

“The senseless acts of violence occurring in our city affect every one of us,” Redd said in a statement. “We need to assure our residents that all life matters and that we are serious about making our city safe by expanding the number of boots on the ground. This decision to move towards a Camden Metro Division is being made solely on what is right for our residents – nothing more, nothing less.”

Layoffs of the city’s police force will begin by the end of the month, according to the mayor’s office. County officials said that at most 49 percent of the city’s police officers, based on an application process, will be transferred to the new county division under the plan.

Gabriel said the terms of contract for current officers of the city's police department, which include longevity bonuses, day-shift differentials and other costs, make it too expensive to transfer all of them to the new force, so the rest of the Metro Division will be staffed by new hires. Louis Cappelli Jr., director of the Camden County Board of Freeholders, told NBC News that more than 1,500 people from various states and police backgrounds have already applied for the county positions.

The new division, to be fully funded by the city of Camden and the state of New Jersey, will begin field training on the streets as early as October for a period of 17 to 19 weeks.

But no matter how long the training, Rockefeller Institute Director Thomas Gais told NBC News that consolidating into one system and increasing cost-effectiveness takes time.  

“It’s going to be a disruption at least for a while before some kind of consolidation happens, before the reorganization begins to work as intended,” Gais said. “There’s a tradeoff generally in the responsiveness to local needs and efficiency in reallocating resources, so the question becomes whether the reorganization reduces the quality of service and whether the short-term risk is worthwhile in the long run.”

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Gabriel said that cities within Camden County have the option to cede their municipal police force to a county department.

Saving money
Union officials argue that Camden's move is a way for the city to get out of collective bargaining with police. The county's new metro division officers will be non-union members.

The police department in Camden has been under state control since 2005, when then-mayor Gwendolyn Faison called for the takeover. The agreement is set to expire at the end of the year, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has thrown his support behind the transition to county control.

“A county police force that has a reasonable contract and that’s going to provide a huge increase in the number of police officers on the streets here in Camden is a win for everybody,” Christie said at a recent event at Rutgers-Camden University. “I’m willing to put my name on the line for this concept.”

Other state officials have backed similar initiatives.

A 2011 report by the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association, a group representing the nation’s 63 largest police forces, found that 70 percent were consolidating some law enforcement functions to compensate for recent budget cuts.

• Faced with mounting costs and declining revenue, the city of Midvale, Utah, was forced to merge four local police agencies with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department.  
• In Pennsylvania, the state police are increasingly taking on more patrol duties following the recent closures of municipal departments. Since 2010, at least 33 cities scattered throughout the state have closed or scaled back their agencies, according to state records.
• Police agencies in Oakland and Detroit have raised concerns about their ability to respond to routine resident burglaries, theft, and public nuisance calls because they were stretched too thin providing support for other agencies. 

“We’re seeing the economy do a lot of different things to the agencies, which are looking at various forms of consolidation, all of which is driven by the economy,” Melekian said, adding that he knows of at least 100 police agencies around the country undergoing some form of service consolidation.

Cities that have made the switch from municipal to county or regional forces have reported saving millions of dollars and passing grades on the street, but Melekian said a shakeup of the current system in Camden won't eradicate crime or solve budgetary woes.

“The consensus seems to be that this saves money, but it does not produce instantaneous savings,” Melekian said. “There are too many issues that need to be resolved, too many expenses, so at some point they’ll have to work through these inefficiencies before they get the results they want.”

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The trial of an Amish-Mennonite minister accused of helping an American woman spirit the child she had with her former same-sex partner out of the country just before she lost custody is getting under way this week.

Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., is charged with aiding and abetting Lisa Miller in taking her child, Isabella, to Nicaragua with the intent to obstruct the parental rights of her former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins, according to the court indictment. He is not related to Lisa Miller and could face a three-year sentence if convicted.

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Federal agents haven’t been able to locate Isabella or Lisa Miller, who was indicted on international kidnapping charges in 2010. Miller gave birth to Isabella, who is now 10, through in vitro fertilization when the couple was still together in 2002. She later denounced homosexuality and took up conservative Christian ideals, Reuters reported.

 

"I think she's in the equivalent of the underground railroad with the religious people ... who see the gay rights agenda overwhelming their religious rights," Gary Buseck, legal director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which helped Jenkins in her legal effort for visitation rights, told Reuters.

The case has drawn attention in part because it involves an international custody dispute, but also because it touches upon two major issues in the public square: gay rights and religion. A jury was selected Tuesday in Burlington, Vt., and opening arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.

Kenneth Miller's lawyer, Joshua Autry, told Reuters that his client didn't plan to obstruct Jenkins' visitation rights. 

"Unfortunately for Kenneth Miller the government has decided to drag him hundreds of miles from his home to a distant venue to prosecute him in violation of his constitutional rights," he said. "We believe that after all of the evidence comes forth the jury will acquit him." 

Kenneth Miller allegedly helped arrange the pair’s exit from their home in Lynchburg, Va., to Canada, where they crossed the border from New York on Sept. 22, 2009. He then facilitated the purchase of plane tickets to Nicaragua and set up contacts for them in the Central American country, according to an affidavit filed by Deputy U.S. Marshal Max Galusha.

Lisa Miller wed her former partner, Janet Jenkins, in a civil union in Vermont, but their relationship broke down in 2003. In the fall of that year, Miller moved to Virginia with Isabella. In November, she filed to dissolve their civil union, Galusha said. Reports said their union was dissolved in 2004.

The next years were filled with back-and-forth court hearings over child visitation. The court granted rights to parent-child contact to Jenkins in June 2004, but by the fall of 2009, Miller had not allowed court-ordered visits for Jenkins for much of the year.

The court determined in November 2009 that Jenkins would have sole physical and legal custody of Isabella starting on Jan. 2010, ruling that Miller had willfully interfered with her visitation rights. But Miller had already fled her home in Lynchburg, Va., with her daughter in tow.

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Kenneth Miller is the leader of a Beachy Amish Mennonite church in Stuarts Draft, The New York Times reported. The sect believes that same-sex marriage is a sin and its members said the mother and daughter were sheltered by their missionaries in Nicaragua, the newspaper reported. 

There are about 13,000 members of the Beachy Amish Mennonite sect worldwide, Cory Anderson, a member and doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, told The Times.

Lisa Miller had filed her lawsuit seeking an order of parentage (to declare that she was the only one with parental rights to Isabella) in Virginia on the day that state's statute banning same-sex marriage went into effect in 2004, said Greg Nevins, a Lambda Legal attorney who worked on the case from that year to 2010. He noted it was important to establish such attempts at an "end-run" -- by changing jurisdictions in order to get a desired outcome -- would not be acceptable.

The case was thus important, not because it broke new ground or put same-sex parents in a different category, but "because it basically acknowledges that they should be treated ... the same as other people parenting children,” Nevins said.

Sarah Star, Jenkins' lawyer in Vermont, said she hoped the trial of Kenneth Miller would send a message to those continuing to "aid and abet" the abduction and ongoing crime, though she didn't think her client was going to get closure from the proceedings. 

“People need to be held accountable for breaking the law, but she’s interested in what’s going to bring Isabella home," she told NBC News. "The bottom line is … that Isabella is still missing."

Reuters and The New York Times contributed to this report.

Comments? Questions? You can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com

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New York power utility Consolidated Edison Inc locked out its unionized workers early on Sunday after contract talks broke down, both sides said, raising the possibility of power cuts during a summer heat wave.

The company asked to extend negotiations for two more weeks, it said, but the union, which had threatened a strike, refused. In response, the firm told union members not to report for work on Sunday.

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Reuters reported that the action increased the risk of power outages if a continuing heat wave puts extra strain on the electrical grid for New York City and suburban Westchester county.

However, a utility official told the New York Daily News that customers should not expect to see any adverse effects.

"Both sides are far apart," said company spokesman Mike Clendenon. "We asked the union to extend the talks for two weeks but they refused."

"We can't operate the system reliably for customers if the union can still call a strike at a moment's notice," he said.

He did not use the term "lockout" but said the company notified unionized workers not to report for work. ConEd managers have been specially trained to handle emergency or maintenance work, he said.

John Melia, a spokesman for the Utilities Workers Union of America (UWUA) said that as of 2 a.m. Sunday (EDT) its 8,500 ConEd power workers were locked out.

"ConEd took the extreme measure of locking out its unionized workforce putting the city of New York and Westchester county in peril during a heat wave."

The lockout came as the summer's second heat wave hit the city of over 8 million people, with stifling temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), raising demand for power to operate air conditioners.

Both sides continued talking for over an hour after the midnight Saturday deadline expired, but failed to reach a settlement over a new contract for the company's unionized workers. A major sticking point in the contract was ConEd's plan to phase out defined pensions.

The union membership had authorized its leaders to call a strike at midnight on Saturday, when the collective bargaining agreement expired. A similar strike in 1983 lasted nine weeks, while a blackout in July 1977 - caused not by labor action but by lightning strikes - resulted in looting and civil disorder in the largest U.S. city.

As the deadline approached, 200-300 union members staged a rally in downtown Manhattan, chanting "If we go out, the lights go out."

Tony Ballone, a union delegate, told Reuters the main issues were pensions, wages and health care. "They (ConEd) want to take everything we have fought for 50 years."

"We're the first responders, we come out in rain and snow, we keep the lights on. All we want is a fair contract," he said.

With Con Edison workers locked out, company managers are left to fix whatever problems arise as New Yorkers crank up their air conditioners.

The utility had only just returned power to Brooklyn and other areas of the city blacked out in a heat wave 10 days ago. Still, with the lockout coming over a weekend, when many businesses in Manhattan are typically closed, demand for power will be lower than a weekday.

That would lessen the risk the utility will have to reduce voltage, commonly called a brown out, as the utility was forced to do last week in Brooklyn and Queens.

Still, the UWUA union stressed that without its skilled workers, the Big Apple could be facing outages if a deal is not agreed. Con Ed has 13,000 employees including union members.

Temperatures in New York City were expected to reach 92 degrees on Sunday and 90 degrees on Monday before slipping into the 80s on Tuesday before the Fourth of July holiday, according to AccuWeather.com. The normal high for this time of year is 83 degrees. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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